Swift exit

Another early start for a CES visit to one of our coastal ringing sites this morning. It was a pretty productive morning with 20 new and 4 retraps captured. Highlights were 3 chiffchaff, 2 bullfinch (retrap male), 5 reed warbler and a retrap female Cetti's warbler.

The main highlights was the westerly movement of swifts. Back in early June there was a similar good day and in a sample count I had just over 130 birds wesst in an hour. Today there were even more. In 30mins between 06:10 and 06:40 I had 320 birds west with groups of upto 40 at the same time and by the end of the morning (11am) I had recorded over 540 through. Also over were 15 crossbill, single tree sparrow (yeartick 179), 5 spoonbill and small numbers of linnet.

Just been entering my ringing data into my PC and there have been some decent numbers in the garden in July. Out of the 78 new birds ringed, 23 were blackbirds along with 2 blackcap and a whitethroat.